> "First, people keep trying to say you should eat insects to save the environment / help animals / be vegan. I don't want to do this. That makes it very convenient that it also seems to be potentially morally wrong."<p>Oh, please. This post reads like a very smart person going to great lengths to justify why they don't want to try eating a new thing. Like, no one is making you my dude. You don't need to flex a Shakespeare quote to justify not wanting to eat something.<p>I don't eat shellfish because they look gross, no one needs to read an essay about it. That's my one beef (hehe) with the rational crowd, and I love 'em to death, but dude you don't need a dive into philosophy to justify why you like pizza better than milkshakes. Let life have some whimsy in it.<p>Also, this is the third time this week I've heard people fretting about being "forced" to eat bugs. It is a common alt-right conspiracy theory that "the left" is going to force everyone to eat bugs. So there are endless memes about how they should courageously eat even more meat to "own the libs". At this point I genuinely wonder if this isn't just an extremely effective marketing campaign by the meat industry to turn meat consumption into a form of protest, right when meat is getting almost unbelievably expensive. My dudes, it ain't "the libs" jacking up the prices of meat and bringing in record profits.<p>So when I see someone fretting about eating bugs I have a hard time taking it too seriously. If you don't want to, then don't.<p>From a financial utility, whey protein is expensive, and not everyone can consume it. The veg alternatives taste like chalk, so I know quite a few athletes who are quite interested in high protein insect flour. If you could spend half the price for a better tasting shake...
Several years ago, I lived very close to the University and there were several Desi stores nearby. So I would shop in them and try out my Indian cookbook all the time, it was great. They had the best fragrant spices and the really good yogurt drinks.<p>Once I purchased a big sack of basmati rice. When I opened it at home, all the larvae came worming their way out. I mean there was a lot of bugs in this rice. And I knew this store tended to keep stuff on their shelves years beyond the expiration dates. So I took the sack of rice back to the store.<p>The kind proprietor told me it was a nothingburger and the bugs wouldn't hurt me. I said ugh. He said just to pick the bugs out. I said there's a lot of bugs. He insisted this is normal and no big deal. I think I finally managed to make the return. And I really didn't feel like shopping there again.<p>Growing up, my dad would say hilarious things, like "mmm, more protein" and lick his lips when he saw a bug on our food. Or, he would see a non-venomous spider in the house and say "he won't eat much." But I managed to develop a rather neurotic fear of pests. I adored beneficial insects when I was a child; I memorized all their Latin scentific names, and I purchased ladybugs and mantids at the nursery and I released them all into the garden. I would build ant farms, fascinated with their tunneling and behaviors. I used to catch butterflies just because they were beautiful. But show me a cockroach or a bedbug in my home, and I will go into a hissy fit. I don't feel like that's abnormal.
> What if there's a 99% chance they're an android? Still seems like you should avoid the torture-murder, for the 1% chance they're human. 99.9999999% chance? At this point I think it becomes less pressing, but it's still a little bad to hurt them.<p>This is a nice lie we tell ourselves, but it's obvious if you look into what we actually do, that we value small things like convenience and money over a small chance of killing someone. See cars for the easiest example, but there's many more.<p>Conveniently your chances of dying in a car accident are around 1% each year: <a href="https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/news/what-are-your-chances-of-dying-in-a-car-crash/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20National%20Safety,103%20for%20any%20given%20year" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/news/what-are-your-ch...</a>.
> First, people keep trying to say you should eat insects to save the environment / help animals / be vegan.<p>This seems a fundamental misunderstanding of Veganism, where I believe even Honey is considered non-vegan by the relevant authorities:<p><a href="https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan/honey-industry" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan/honey-ind...</a>
The trolley problem but its 1 chicken vs 3000 worms.<p>> And don't bugs have [...] passions?<p>Like what? Eating more dirt??<p>> In general, animal neuron number scales up slower than animal weight.<p>A brown bear and a house cat have similar neuron counts?<p>Additionally, assuming neurons are meshed, the ability gained from an additional neuron would be exponential, no?<p>Worms come in at like, what, 10,000 - 100,000 for their entire nervous system, compared to 221,000,000 for a fowl, not only is that 20,000x - 2,000x linearly, going with the assumption that each new neuron is probably more significant than the last, it would be more than worlds apart in ability to think.<p>> most factory-farmed insects are being raised as animal food and not for humans.<p>And therefore if you eat the chicken, you also must be aware of the moral cost of the fact that the insects were killed for the chicken, which was then killed for you. So, morally, just eat the bugs, don't do a double conversion, that's inefficient.
This is a solved problem - don't consume animal products. Doing so causes cancer in the consumer [1], untold suffering for the human producers, who are often children [2], and the deaths of billions of animals per year in the US alone. [3]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(15)00444-1/fulltext" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-28/slaughterhouse-scandal-sends-blackstone-firm-s-debt-tumbling-44#xj4y7vzkg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-28/slaughter...</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima...</a>